Elon Musk finally admits Tesla is building its own custom AI chips Elon Musk has revealed that Tesla, his electric automobile company, is developing its own custom chips for its driverless cars. Musk revealed the effort at a Tesla party that took place at the intelligence conference NIPS. Attendees at the party told The Register that Musk said "I wanted to make it clear that Tesla is serious …
God-like.
Run people over for no reason. Refuse to start and then explode if you look at anther model.
Encourage owners of marque 'A' to war against owners of marque 'B'...
And so on. see the Owner's Bible* for further examples...
* Holy Haines, King James version.
Sounds God like to me. The past becomes the future?
The problem is not only that, but the lack of job openings for new drivers (and similarly in all other industries being automated). In the worst case, there will be a horde of youngsters with no gainful employment. Not all can be robotics designers or in other high-skill jobs. This would be a volatile situation. Lots of unemployed young men is one major reason for the mess in the Middle-East, and in other troublespots.
Musk has taken over from Steve Jobs as the diety to be worshipped amongst the nerds.
I just happen to think that he has too many fingers in too many pies. Something is bound to pop and his empire could come crashing down.
That would be a shame as he has kicked a lot of ass amongst the old entrenched American Car makers and Tesla has made an impact for the good but with the BFR, Hyperloop, Tunnels and Solar, he really needs to concentrate on one Big Thing and make that really great.
But... even if he fails there will still be a lot of followers who will follow his every word as if it was from him upstairs.
Say anything negative about Tesla (even with justification) on a related forum and watch the hate come out. It is worse than the most hardened Apple fanboi.
Before the downvotes come flooding in, I have a Model 3 reservation and am looking forward to driving it sometime in 2019.
What's the track record of Elon Musk ?
An inspirational technologist, able and willing to come up with ideas that other people aren't brave enough to even attempt, and back them through the early stages?
All credit to the man, we need more technologists, we need people to try the stuff that lard-arse corporations are too cowardly to even consider. But I agree with the Tesla 3 ordering AC, Musk has fingers in too many pies. What Saint Steve showed was that there's rarely room for more than one inspirational evangelist in a business, and for Musk, that means he spreads his energies ever more thinly, and has to delegate to lackeys who simply are not clones. So he can and will countermand decisions they make; They won't be multi-millionaires able to risk their own money; And chances are they'll be immensely bright sycophants. Senior people in business are (all too often) poor at trusting others, and very poor at accepting challenge, so if he doesn't absolutely and totally trust them, and they won't challenge him, that's not a recipe for success, is it?
I suspect this lack of trust and unwillingness to be challenged are behind a lot of the diversifications - experts outside the company with more experience and wisdom in particular field say "You'd be a fool to do it that way" or "It cannot be done economically, it at all", and Musk's immediate reaction is "Hell, I can do it, I will do it". That's a great attitude, but slowly and progressively he's taking on the whole world.
Oh, so no one remembers Hyperloop, Powerwall, Global Broadband Constellation, Gigafactory, Solar shingles, Boring company anymore ? All of them are failures. SpaceX is nowhere not close to claimed performance and price per launch, only 1 out of 3 landed first stages were reused, no one knows how much left from original engines. Model S can't make any money with price tag of 100K+, Model 3 manufacturing can't even be started.
The only thing Musk managed to do right is to hold on to PayPal shares after he was kicked out from CEO position by PayPal founders.
@dainB
If you are going to give examples of failure, at least give examples of failure. I think everything you mentioned is actually still in progress. Failures happen when they fail. And none of the examples you have given have failed, in fact, most of them are successes. And having read you post, were you being sarcastic? Because after I wrote the below I realised that everything you wrote was actually the exact opposite of whats actually happening.
Gigafactory - production ramping up.
Hyperloop - people starting to build prototypes.
Powerwell - installations going on around the world. Related - Pueta Rico and the Australian thing that just went online.
Solar Shingles - early days, but still going and a great idea.
Constellation/Global Broadband (same thing) - Two prototype satellites going up early next year.
Boring Company - currently building a test tunnel.
Model 3 production ramping as we speak.
SpaceX - undercutting its competitors by a considerable margin and now launches about half the worlds satellites. And is bringing back boosters for reuse. Whether they use them is up to SpaceX, some already used, the F9H is two reused cores. Block 5 about to come on line which is the final variant and should be good for 100 flights each.
Of course, any of the above might not pan out, but to claim any of them are failures at this point is clearly absolutely incorrect.
Of course, any of the above might not pan out, but to claim any of them are failures at this point is clearly absolutely incorrect.
Aw, he's just furious that all that money is being "wasted" on research, development, and innovation, instead of enabling a cabal of venture vulture capitalists to buy yet another corporation to asset strip, so they can afford more yachts, summer homes in exotic locations, or kowtowing politicians.
"If you are going to give examples of failure, at least give examples of failure. I think everything you mentioned is actually still in progress."
Ok, you've asked for it, it's all a google search away if you want to check yourself.
"Gigafactory - production ramping up."
Really ? Why Tesla bought batteries for South Australia "thing" from Samsung only 3 months ago ? Regardless of that Gigafactory is just an old Panasonic equipment from Beijing factory and does not look anything like it was promised to be.
"Hyperloop - people starting to build prototypes."
Google Maglev Loop for a starter. There's no prototypes. There's nothing whatsoever. There's even no Hyperloop One company thatt is working on it, it's all once a week conference call.
"Powerwell - installations going on around the world. Related - Pueta Rico and the Australian thing that just went online."
Try to place order one for a starter. They don't exist.
"Solar Shingles - early days, but still going and a great idea."
Oh you don't know that SolarCity was owned by Musk's cousin and that's exactly why it was "bought" out on a verge of bankruptcy, do you ?
"Constellation/Global Broadband (same thing) - Two prototype satellites going up early next year."
Ahaha. 4500 satellites over 5 years - you can figure out how many car sized satellites need to be launched every day to reach that number yourself.
"Boring Company - currently building a test tunnel."
14 metres long using old sewer drilling rig he bought for cheap. He needs it to channel all bullshit from Tesla office.
"Model 3 production ramping as we speak."
Right... all 262 of them, assembled manually.
"SpaceX - undercutting its competitors by a considerable margin and now launches about half the worlds satellites. "
Again marketing garbage from Musk, you don't even know that there's two different Falcon 9, one that can return and one that can actually deliver some load to the orbit and they're still no competitor to Chinese and Russians.
Look, I understand it's not what Musk wants you to know when he mumbles another bullshit from the stage but you can figure that out yourself.
Problem is you don't want to.
Yes, he's a nerdy guy who spends his lottery winnings on nerdy things. Remember where his fortune can from, not exactly rocket science as we say. The actual rocket science today is being done by actual rocket scientist he had the unique insight to hire.
Such bravery, to have an idea and use your resources to pursue it! Actually mostly other people's resources as it turns out. Cough cough solar city bailout...
"Cough cough solar city bailout..."
Lyndon Rive is the co-founder of SolarCity and served as its CEO until 2017. SolarCity; a provider of clean energy services that designs, finances, and installs photovoltaic systems, performs energy-efficiency audits, and retrofits and builds charging stations for electric vehicles. Rive co-founded SolarCity with his brother Peter in 2006.
Rive is a cousin of SolarCity investor and entrepreneur Elon Musk, and their mothers are twins.
That's all you need to know about SolarCity bailout.
> What's the track record of Elon Musk ?
Pretty good. His company created the world's first reusable booster rocket, and the first reusable cargo capsule. I suspect in the long run, the space achievements are what he will be remembered for.
I find him much more interesting than Jobs.
What's the track record of Elon Musk ?
He's built three billion-dollar-plus companies in a row, all starting from nothing, and all of which have been highly successful at disrupting existing well-established and highly protective industries that have traditionally been extremely hostile environments for new entrants.
What's *your* record?
"He's built three billion-dollar-plus companies in a row, all starting from nothing, and all of which have been highly successful at disrupting " blah blah blah
None of which turned single cent of profit.
"What's *your* record?"
Not burning through 600 millions of investor dollars a quarter.
Not burning through 600 millions of investor dollars a quarter.
... also not leaving anything remarkable for the future generations, either. Not much of a record, is it? Unless you consider financial profit to be the ultimate goal of any worthwhile activity, in which case please pass my sympathy to your family and friends.
> Except Steve Jobs actually delivered something and almost always on time and built most profitable company in the world
He had some stumbles along the way... The Lisa was too pricey, the Pixar Imaging Computer failed to be adopted by medical scanning staff - though it did make Jobs a billionaire after his continued finding of the company led to an Oscar - and NeXT wasn't widely adopted, though Tim Berniers-Lee did something interesting with it... and it got Jobs back into Apple. Still, Jobs cared about what he did.
Musk cares too. Whether or not AI emerges as a threat, there are other threats that on a long enough timescale are inevitable, such as a whopping great meteorite wiping us out. Spreading our eggs across more than basket is reaction to that. The only other way we can avoid being wiped out is to have some meteor interception technology - this can only be aided by having cheap and reliable access to space. Either escaping that threat or averting it rely upon the sort of stuff SpaceX does.
Other threats include nuclear war, a nutter with a desktop viral DNA synthesiser, wars over resources, crop failure etc.
Important to remember - Investors, in general, are not stupid people. If they think DONT think Tesla are a worthwhile investment, they don't need to put any money in. And yet, here they are, putting money in. Ergo, they think Tesla are a good investment. And I think they are right, certainly better than the money sinks that are the other car companies in the states.
Well although I agree about the specific example of Tesla (I have a Model X - silly price but a good offer when I was feeling particularly flush and I haven't regretted it, but then I look at Uber and have to question that.... and bitcoin speculation at the moment, and HP (unfortunately ,the list goes on :-()
>needs to concentrate on one Big Thing and make that really great
But which 'Big Thing'? Over-concentration on one project means total failure if that one project crashes. As it is, Musk only needs one of these to succeed, and he can then afford to cruise on the others.
"Say anything negative about Tesla (even with justification) on a related forum and watch the hate come out."
That I can definitely agree with. However, that's something you'll see happening everywhere. In a way you could even argue that on behalf of Tesla ;)
But I do agree on some points that there's a lot of hype surrounding some of the things with Musk does. Up to such height that no one bothers about details anymore, even if they are pretty important.
Take the Hyperloop. Has no one spotted the massive amounts of rust which you can see forming on the inside of the currently build test track? Every time a reporter films and gives you a shot of the inside then you can see it for yourself. That's not an example of good engineering and it can cause many problems in the future, but it seems no one cares. Each to their own but if you know what rust actually is, what it does and what effect it can have then yeah...
Things like that often surprise me.
But.. one way to find out.
"Take the Hyperloop. Has no one spotted the massive amounts of rust which you can see forming on the inside of the currently build test track? Every time a reporter films and gives you a shot of the inside then you can see it for yourself. That's not an example of good engineering and it can cause many problems in the future, but it seems no one cares."
-If I build a quick and dirty concept demonstrator (and I often do.. sometimes even in LEGO), I do not bother with corrosion protection unless this has direct impact on the concept that I am demonstrating.
The hyperloop tube itself will require serious engineering. Engineering the hyperloop tunnel BEFORE engineering the hyperloop capsule is what leads to engineering marvels like the F35 and the Space shuttle.
So not content with building the cars completely from scratch, from huge control and vertical integration of battery manufacture, from buying the companies making the production kit, owning the distribution to the maximum permitted extent, now Tesla want to bake their own silicon?
This is taking vertical integration beyond all reasonable bounds, and the ability to control and manage such a sprawling empire is going to be so thinly spread that it just won't work. Because it involves Twinkle Toes Musk, he will get away with it for a while, investors, competitors, suppliers, nobody wants to say the Emperor has no clothes. But, eventually reality will bite back, and Tesla will find out the hard way why manufacturers of complex products in competitive markets aren't vertically integrated from mine to shop.
Let me fix it for you
"So not content with building the cars completely from scratch,"
Tesla as a company does not have anything to do with Musk, neither did first Tesla Roadster.
Fremont factory is an old assembly line of GM and Toyota closed in 2009 and sold to Tesla.
Chassis is developed by Lotus.
Electric motor is from Taiwanese Fukuta.
Batteries are from Panasonic (yes, Gigafactory ones will be as well, if it ever starts production).
Controller is from Chinese manufacturer of electric buses, can't be bothered to look it up now, BDY ?
What did you say was built from scratch there ?
Let me fix it for you
Actually, I've got a family member working with Tesla, I'm well aware that they use external suppliers. In your desperate bid to pick an argument, you've assumed that I was saying that they didn't use any external suppliers, which (if you go back and read it) was not correct. The whole point was the extent to which Tesla and Musk want control over what is done, and if they can't get it commercially, they'll do the job themselves.
And talking of "not being correct", if Tesla as a company "does not have anything to do with Musk", who the fuck is that bloke who glories in the title of Chief Executive Officer of Tesla Inc? You know, South African bloke, he was one of the founders of Tesla Motors, name escapes me. And separate to that, who is the largest beneficial owner of Tesla Inc shares? Including all institutional investors, it still happens to be some billionaire playboy, bloke who made his money with Paypal...maybe you could help me out, what was his name again?
"In your desperate bid to pick an argument, you've assumed that I was saying that they didn't use any external suppliers, which (if you go back and read it) was not correct."
I'm just pointing quite obvious fact that Tesla Inc does not have any unique technology and just assembles cars from third party components. And doing it poorly.
I'm just pointing quite obvious fact that Tesla Inc.....
A moment ago you were "just pointing out the obvious fact" that "Tesla as a company does not have anything to do with Musk". I think you're essentially arguing out of your arse, albeit your excremental logic is peppered with a few facts.
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